Chromatis Redefines Metro Network Economics With Metropolis, the First System to Integrate Multi-service Switching With Cost-optimized Optical Networking.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

HERNDON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 2000

Chromatis is First to Provide Dramatic Improvements in Cost,

Efficiency, Scale, and Management of Multi-Service Metro Networks

Chromatis Networks, Inc., introduced today its Metropolis(TM) family of next-generation optical transport products and its MetroView(TM) network management system for metropolitan service providers.

The Metropolis products are the first ready-to-deploy systems to combine optical transport with packet, TDM, and cell switching into a fully integrated, wavelength-optimized solution with unified operations and management. By dramatically reducing the number of network elements needed to build and scale multi-service networks, Metropolis increases revenue potential while reducing the cost and complexity associated with deploying and managing both traditional and emerging services.

In addition, Metropolis incorporates Chromatis' award-winning Selective WDM(TM) (SWDM(TM)) technology, which provides both a 10X improvement in first cost and lower overall cost of ownership over traditional DWDM systems. Metropolis also delivers more effective bandwidth per wavelength than any competitive alternative with Chromatis' innovative Multiprotocol Wavelength(TM) technology.

The Metropolis family of products gives service providers a cost-effective and practical alternative for migrating metro networks beyond the limitations of Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) to a more flexible and scalable solution -- without having to abandon profitable legacy services or redesign their networks. Metropolis allows metro service providers to leverage DWDM technology to capitalize on high-bandwidth revenue opportunities, but avoids the economic and operational barriers to DWDM associated with existing alternatives.

Service providers can use Selective WDM to migrate networks to DWDM technology one site at a time as revenue opportunities justify it, with simple module adds versus forklift upgrades. Where bandwidth requirements dictate the use of DWDM, Metropolis' Multi-Protocol Wavelength(TM) technology allows service providers to combine TDM, ATM, and IP services over a single wavelength, avoiding the high cost of underutilized optical resources.

Together, Chromatis' SWDM and Multi-Protocol Wavelength technologies revolutionize the economics of broadband service delivery by allowing service providers to quickly and efficiently adapt their networks in response to market demand. For example, carriers can evolve their service offerings to include new metro services such as Gigabit Ethernet and dedicated customer wavelengths without any network downtime or loss of revenue. Finally, service providers can provision and manage all of their legacy and emerging services from a single unified management interface that integrates with their existing operations and support systems (OSS).

"While `all-optical' products are a good fit for long-haul networks, metropolitan networks need solutions that provide low-entry cost combined with high growth capacity for revenue-generating services to accommodate uneven, yet fast-growing demand," said Bob Barron, president and chief operating officer at Chromatis Networks.

"Equally important, metro service providers need to reduce the complexity of managing multi-service networks and lower long-term operational costs. Metropolis provides the only `no compromise' solution: low entry cost, high scale, the capability to deliver a wide variety of services, reduced complexity, and faster provisioning. That's why Metropolis is a clear choice for our customers."

Chromatis markets its products to Local Exchange Carriers (LECs), Interexchange Carriers (IXCs), Tier 1 Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and Cable Operators, and is currently in multiple customer trials with the Metropolis product.

"Our mission is to implement a network architecture that makes it easier and more profitable to deliver a continuous stream of high-speed services to business customers," said Dave Schaeffer, president and CEO of Cogent Communications, one of Chromatis' trial customers. "Because Cogent is driving the market with extreme bandwidth at revolutionary price points, we have to have best-of-breed price/performance. We like Metropolis because it provides a combination of the bandwidth we need at the cost points we require, the lowest ongoing cost of ownership, and unparalleled ease of management without sacrificing anything when it comes to growth or revenue potential."

The Metropolis Advantage -- Cost-Optimized, Scalable Metro Transport for Legacy, Emerging, and Future Services

The Metropolis product family is redefining the model for deploying metro services by consolidating multiple layers of network equipment into a fully integrated wavelength-optimized solution with unified operations and management. The Metropolis family includes two separate carrier-class systems designed to meet the bandwidth and service requirements of different metro network environments cost effectively.

The Metropolis 4000 Series is a high-density solution for the heavy traffic termination needs of large central offices (COs) and switching points-of-presence (POPs). A single Metropolis 4500 can provide the transport capacity of 32 fully configured SONET rings, the switching capacity of a 70Gbps core ATM switch, and the grooming capabilities of a 70Gbps broadband cross-connect, in one highly integrated platform. Metropolis 4500 and 4000 are fully redundant and comply with BellCore NEBS Level 3 standards.

The Metropolis 2000 Series is a compact solution for co-location cages, small COs, cable head-ends, and multi-tenant office buildings where broadband traffic originates. Metropolis' universal slot architecture and multi-service tributary interfaces provide for a flexible and highly scalable service aggregation platform with integrated ATM switching, broadband SONET cross-connect functionality, and multi-wavelength optical transport. Metropolis 2000 and 2500 are fully redundant and comply with BellCore NEBS Level 3 standards.

Each Metropolis product integrates three functional subsystems managed as a single entity through Chromatis' MetroView network management system to ensure fast provisioning across multiple network layers:

--   The optical subsystem provides bandwidth at any speed, using
     conventional 1310 nanometer (nm) optics, DWDM optics, and/or
     Chromatis' patented SWDM technology. The Metropolis 4000 series
     supports up to 32 protected wavelengths per chassis. The 2000
     series supports up to four protected wavelengths per chassis and
     is upgradable with expansion shelves.

--   The multiplexing subsystem uses Chromatis' Multi-Protocol
     Wavelength capability to deliver more bandwidth per wavelength
     than any other alternative. Using a combination of packet, cell,
     and circuit switching, Metropolis not only multiplexes traffic
     from multiple lower speed services, but also combines multiple
     traffic types, such as Time Division Multiplexing (TDM),
     Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and Internet Protocol (IP)
     traffic, onto a single wavelength to eliminate stranded bandwidth
     and optimize transport capacity. Most DWDM systems require a
     separate wavelength for each protocol. Metropolis' high-capacity,
     multi-service switching matrix cross connects traffic traveling
     between wavelengths or between rings, while allowing full
     non-blocked access to every wavelength from any slot.

--   The service subsystem provides native support for a wide variety
     of tributary interfaces, including ATM, IP/Packet over SONET
     (POS), 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet, and traditional TDM circuits. In
     addition, both Metropolis products allow access to "express"
     wavelengths for support of native wavelength services and for
     transporting other types of services that do not map into
     standard transmission format. Furthermore, Metropolis' universal
     slot architecture allows any tributary interface to run at any
     speed in any slot, providing for unrestricted configuration and
     migration capabilities.

Optical Layer Flexibility

Metropolis products support all physical and logical topologies including ring, multi-ring, mesh and point-to-point. In addition, Metropolis' modular and flexible architecture allows service providers to optimize their fiber resources in any environment. For example, in fiber-rich cities, service providers can configure Metropolis with low-cost 1310nm optical modules to minimize transport cost effectively using Metropolis as an integrated, high density ADM/cross-connect.

In Fiber-constrained environments or where bandwidth needs are heavy, service providers can use Chromatis' Selective WDM (SWDM) technology to add DWDM to any and every node that needs higher capacity up to a total of 32 wavelengths (80 Gbps) per fiber. In both scenarios, all services are managed and provisioned by Chromatis' Metroview management system, further streamlining network operations.

"Metro service providers now have more service options than ever to offer their customers. But as their service portfolios become more diverse, their networks become more complex -- and thus more costly -- to build, provision, and manage," said Scott Clavenna, principal analyst at Pioneer Consulting, LLC (Cambridge, Mass.). "Because they offer an integrated, multi-layered solution, optical edge networking solutions like Metropolis are emerging in 2000 as the most important new sector in the optical networks market."

Practical Migration to Optical Networking with SWDM

To eliminate the high cost of optical networking, the Metropolis products incorporate a new technology developed and patented by Chromatis and introduced in the fall of 1999. Called Selective Wave Division Multiplexing, this technology allows a low-cost shared ring to coexist for the first time on the same fiber as a DWDM ring. In this way, SWDM enables a carrier to deliver one or more wavelengths to those sites that require multi-gigabit capacities today, while allowing other sites on the same ring to share less-expensive bandwidth that is not based on DWDM.

In addition, SWDM allows carriers to upgrade sites to full DWDM capacity as needed at a fraction of the cost and time required using conventional DWDM rings: the current DWDM migration path can be as much as 10 times more expensive than SWDM upgrades. Carriers can perform SWDM upgrades without disrupting service to the site, resulting in greater customer satisfaction and higher profits.

With SDWM, all sites can communicate at a variety of speeds using the 1310nm-shared ring, while only the sites that need very high bandwidth tap into one or more of the 1550nm DWDM wavelengths. The result is that only the high-bandwidth sites pay for DWDM optics. As traffic grows, carriers can upgrade any site at any time to access the 1550 DWDM channels, without disrupting the service to that site or affecting the operation of the rest of the ring. If necessary, the entire ring can support DWDM. If demand never materializes to justify DWDM bandwidths, the carrier never incurs the expense of deploying DWDM.

Service providers that use SWDM to stage their migration to DWDM can also take advantage of optical price/performance improvements, which currently exceed the metrics of Moore's Law.

"Service providers do not have the luxury of redesigning their networks to incorporate new technologies," said Chris Nicoll, director of Optical and Carrier Infrastructure at Current Analysis (Sterling, Va.). "They must be able to generate revenue from existing services while they evolve their networks to support new services and technologies. Chromatis' SWDM technology gets service providers into DWDM at a very low entry cost, and it lets them ride the revenue curve to expand their investment in optical networking."

MetroView -- Simplified Service Delivery and Bandwidth Management

While Metropolis products use SWDM to solve the evolving bandwidth requirements of metro networks, the MetroView network management system provides the intelligence to manage this capacity as well as to provision and deliver value-added services that drive bandwidth demand. Based on the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) model, MetroView provides configuration, fault, and performance management for the Metropolis product families.

To deliver multiple services in today's metro networks, carriers must deploy service-specific boxes, each with their own configuration and management systems, at multiple layers in the network. The resulting complexity has created a bottleneck to service delivery and increased the management burden.

MetroView integrates with higher-level management and Operations and Support Systems (OSSes) to provide point-and-click service configuration across multiple layers of network technologies. Administrators can choose logical views of service connectivity or drill down to explore the physical connections themselves. MetroView dynamically gathers information on network topology and can automatically select the optimal primary and redundant data paths through the network.

To simplify network monitoring, MetroView consolidates status and alarm information through multiple service and protocol layers. The customizable alarm listing allows administrators to assign severity levels to individual alarm parameters in specific network elements, system cards, tributary units, and termination points. With point-and-click ease, administrators can launch such troubleshooting and maintenance operations as loopbacks, forced signals, and monitor points and then track them using convenient icons on the network topology map.

MetroView performance management allows proactive analysis, real-time accounting, and customizable reporting of managed network resources. Users can customize performance parameters and thresholds on-screen to suit individual applications. MetroView supports third-party billing and analysis programs and can export performance and other data directly to existing OSSes.

"Today, metro service providers have to correlate information from multiple network elements and multiple management systems in order to provision, deliver, and maintain new services," said John Morency, executive vice president of consulting at Sage Research (Natick, Mass.). "That complexity lengthens service time to market and therefore lowers return on investment. Chromatis' integrated approach to service delivery and management offers providers the opportunity to increase their competitiveness--while improving their profitability."

Pricing and Availability

Metropolis products are commercially available today. The list price for a fully operational Metropolis, including optical, switching, and service systems, starts at under $30,000, far less than most "optics only" systems.

About Chromatis

Chromatis Networks develops next-generation transport solutions for metropolitan-area service providers. The company's Metropolis(TM) products, patented Selective Wave Division Multiplexing(TM) (SWDM(TM)) technology, and Multi-Protocol Wavelength(TM) technology allow service providers to address high-bandwidth revenue opportunities quickly on a site-by-site basis and support a full range of existing and emerging services with a high rate of return. SWDM received a Category Breaker Award from Network World magazine in November 1999.

Founded in 1998, Chromatis is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, and maintains a research and development facility in Tel Aviv, Israel. A seasoned team of executives leads Chromatis with wide experience in transmission systems and data networking from companies such as Nortel, Cascade, Ciena, 3Com, US Robotics, Scorpio Communications, Newbridge Networks, and ECI Telecom. The company has received more than $50 million in funding to date from leading venture capitalists including Crosspoint, ComVentures, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Soros Private Equity, Chase Capital, Lucent Venture Partners, and Eucalyptus Ventures.

For additional information about Chromatis Networks and its products, contact the company at 301/657-1077 or at www.chromatis.com.